Lifting the curse of menstruation: toward a feminist perspective on the menstrual cycle

Lifting the curse of menstruation is examined as a process of freeing the imagination rather than rejecting the importance of biology. The defining features of the feminist and biomedical perspectives are discussed and an overview is offered of unexamined assumptions about women, the cycle, and the conduct of research which operate within modern scientific medicine. The real alternative to these unexamined assumptions is seen as the development of a revolutionary system of classification in which even the smallest unit of analysis is a multidimensional process. Suggestions are offered about the proper role of the feminist perspective in helping to free our imaginations and move us toward such an alternative paradigm.